Threnody (comics)

Threnody
Cover to X-Man #13 featuring X-Man and Threnody
Publication information
Publisher	Marvel Comics
First appearance	X-Men vol. 2 #27 (December, 1993)
Created by	Fabian Nicieza (writer) Richard Bennett (artist)
In-story information
Alter ego	Melody Jacobs
Species	Human Mutant
Team affiliations	Marauders
Abilities	Ability to sense the dead or dying and absorb the necro-energy, then use that to release a concussive blast or Zombie creation.

Threnody is a fictional character created by Marvel Comics for the X-Men series.

Melody Jacobs was born in Manhattan and led a relatively normal life until her mutant powers manifested in adolescence. She found herself feeding off of the energies released by the dead and the dying, energies so dark and primal she found herself lost in them. Some of the residual slivers of the dead’s souls lingered in her mind as she absorbed this energy, leaving her psyche in a state of chaos. Melody became a runaway and lived on the streets alone for a week before she was found by Emil Blonsky, the gamma-mutated Abomination. The Abomination had established himself as the lord of a clan of homeless and runaways known as the Forgotten, who took refuge in the sewers under the city. Melody spent weeks lying in a fugue-like state in Blonsky’s “Last Lair”, cared for by the sewer dwellers he championed. One older couple looked after Melody most of the time and called her “Threnody” after the mournful cries she made in-between her brief periods of lucidity. Sadly, no one was prepared for the second stage of Threnody’s mutation. She violently released the “death-purge” her body had built up, killing her kindly caretakers in an instant.

Horrified by what she had done and rejected by the Abomination, Threnody fled to the west coast and began living on the streets of Los Angeles. During this period, she was in constant agony and often delusional. In L.A., she met Gordon Lefferts, a geneticist occasionally in the employ of Mister Sinister who was the first mutant exposed to the Legacy Virus. Before his passing, Lefferts identified the virus within him and began studying it for a possible cause and cure. Threnody and a number of other homeless were squatting in the private lab space where Lefferts worked and he may have performed some experiments on them while they stayed with him. Whether it was because of this or something else, Threnody’s powers were altered and she became uniquely sensitive to the Legacy Virus. She could feel mutants around the world, empathically accumulating a death charge from each one that was infected with the virus.

Threnody was present at Lefferts’ lab when both Mister Sinister and the X-Men came searching for the geneticist’s work on the virus. Sinister was intrigued by Threnody, seeing her as a potential bloodhound to hunt down infected mutants for him in his efforts to stop the spread of the virus. He offered to try to help Melody, suggesting that at the very least her powers could help locate those in need of assistance due to the Legacy Virus. Threnody tentatively agreed. Beast and Rogue were reluctant to allow Threnody to go with Sinister instead of returning with them to the mansion but Hank realized that Sinister might be better equipped to fight the virus…for he had no conscience to hold him back in his search for a cure.